Jan 28, 2018
J.G.G. @ Bar del Sidecar 27/01/18
Foto por Laura V.
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J.G.G. @ Bar del Sidecar 27/01/18
Foto por Laura V.
An Early Trip to Walmart
I laid there on my back on the bed with my legs curled toward my chest while my mom changed my diaper. Except she had run out of diapers. She disappeared down the hallway for a moment, grabbing something from the bathroom and then reappeared with a wash cloth. She folded the wash cloth into thirds, pulled my legs up in the air and let my bottom rest on top of it. This was my diaper. She knew wash cloths didn’t cut it as diapers. She used this method before on her younger siblings when she was in charge of them growing up and learned then that they caused infections and rashes.
I went to bed that night cuddled next to my mom in a bed we shared in my Grandma’s basement. I felt the denseness and itchiness of the wash cloth between my legs. The walls of the basement were made of stone and the floors were made of concrete. The door to my mom and I’s room was made out of old wood that made loud creaking noises as it swung open and closed. Next door to our room was my grandma’s food cellar where she kept years supplies of canned fruits, jams, and puddings. The cool temperatures and lack of light in the basement made for a perfect place to store food or for spiders to nest but it was something of nightmares to call home.
The next morning I was woken by my mom quietly grabbing me out of bed. The sun hadn’t come up yet and it was still dark outside. My mom dressed me in warm clothes then quietly carried me up the stairs and out the front door, sneaking away to the car.
Forty-five minutes later we arrived in an empty parking lot of a big store with a lit-up blue Walmart sign. The store wasn’t open yet so my mom reclined her seat put a jacket over her head and took a nap. Once we parked she pulled me out of a carseat and had me bundled in a blanket in the passenger seat. An hour or so later, the store opened and my mom and I were the first ones through the doors. I sat in the front of the shopping cart, with my legs dangling out from the square metal holes, while we strolled along taking our time between the aisles and stopping in the diaper section.
By the time we made our way out of the store, the parking lot that was lit by street lamps and the blue Walmart sign, was now fully lit by a blue sky and it had filled up with cars. We wheeled the shopping cart to our car, unloading a package of diapers and a few other things into the trunk. My mom strapped me into the car seat and we headed home.
My mom didn't talk about my dad or her upbringing throughout my early life, despite how persistent I was in asking or how badly I wanted to know. When I was younger she said she would tell me when I was older and then when I was older she would tell me she didn't like to talk about it.
She began to open up about it more after my dad died.
When my dad died, I was in college in Boise, ID and I drove to Salt Lake City for his funeral. The night of the funeral my siblings minus my oldest sister, my half siblings from the first wife, the first wife, and my mom all sat together in a living room reminiscing. The first wife shared stories and memories and my mom joined in.
After that my mom was more open to sharing stories with me. The information from chapter one came from conversations I had with my mom after my dad's death or that I gathered on the night after the funeral. The rest is my story.
Worried about space, my mom called her sister who had a friend with a Uhaul. With everyone's help, they unpacked the minivan and repacked everything into the Uhaul- strapping my older brother and I into our car seats in the smaller vehicle and taking off to Montana.
One day in the Fall, my mom's two bothers drove down to Utah and helped her pack her things into a minivan that belonged to my dad. Before they finished packing, my dad came out and told them he wouldn't allow them to take the minivan. Instead, he let her take one of his smaller vehicles.
My dad was too busy courting his fourth wife, who was 16 years old, to fight my mom on leaving this time.
With school approaching, my mom decided to send her two oldest children, ages six and five, with my grandpa who was visiting Utah for a conference, to Montana. That way they could attend school that Fall and live with my grandparents until she could join them a couple months later.